June
and I decided to take a day trip. Kinda peculiar as in
different and unusual - (not as in weird, in today's
context) but just an out of the ordinary day.

So we drove
the 27 miles from Lee's Summit to Peculiar, Missouri.

Town
Motto: "Where the 'odds' are with you".

A historical plaque in the town is noteworthy.
It reads:

"In
1861-1864 while bloody battles raged throughout the
southern states nothing happened here."

Unusual
place names are not unusual in Missouri. One, however, is
Peculiar. Peculiar is a town in Cass County, southeast of
Kansas City.

Peculiar received its name in 1868 when the first
postmaster, Edgar Thomson, had his first choice,
Excelsior, rejected because it already existed in
Atchison County, Missouri. Several other choices were
also rejected. The story goes that the annoyed Thomson
wrote to the Postmaster General himself to complain
saying, among other things, "We don't care what name you
give us so long as it is sort of 'peculiar'," (with
"peculiar" in quotation marks). Washington approved that
name. The post office was established on June 22, 1868

Peculiar
has a three legged water tower - they are unusual or
different too.

Using the town
name on business signs, is the usual thing in many

towns, in
Peculiar they can make you smile.

We did
meet some very nice folks.

One
was a young lady that ran a small business. Her family and
ours were similar in many ways. She did have a Peculiar
water bill! It was over fourteen hundred dollars for one
month! She is attempting to convince the Peculiar Water
department that they have a unusual typo.

Then in a
small park with a comfortable gazebo, we met a gentleman
that had a terrier mix dog named Pippin that was fast enough
to catch flies with his paws. Pippin** had a peculiar day
while we were there, he caught a bee under his paw. He
received empathy and much petting after that.

All in
all it was a nice day, and another peculiar thing, it only
cost us about two gallons of gas

**Pippin:
A highly admired or very
admirable person or thing. Peculiar name for a dog -
but it works!
!